Raise your hand if you’re surprised that the trillions of dollars spent on COVID-19 relief gave way to billions of dollars in government waste, fraud, and abuses. I’m not, but based on recent reporting, you might think this type of carelessness with taxpayers’ money has never before happened. Sadly, such waste and fraud are normal […]
(WANG GANG/FEATURECHINA/Newscom) Over the last few months, residents of Shanghai and some other Chinese cities have endured brutal Covid lockdowns, that include such cruelties as forcible separation of parents from children, starvation, and fatal denial of medical treatment to people needing it for non-covid emergencies. This, combined with other repressive government policies, has led […]
President Joe Biden is taking victory laps for last year’s reduced budget deficit. No one would be happier than me to see this number fall in a significant way. But the decline has nothing to do with the president’s policies, and it changes little about the dangers of our fiscal situation. According to monthly reporting […]
Finally! Long after lifting mask requirements in other settings, New York City has continued to require masks in schools and day cares for very young children. That madness will come to an end this week. Effective today, children ages 2 to 4 will no longer be forced to wear masks in schools or child care […]
Thus far, researchers have not identified ancestral viruses that could have plausibly given rise to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19—so says a new report from the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins (SAGO) of Novel Pathogens set up by the World Health Organization (WHO). The report, however, notes that “the current available data on […]
In February, I crossed the border between Mexico and the U.S. by foot, reentering California from Tijuana. I presented my passport but no negative COVID test. Last week, when I reentered Texas from Mexico by air, coming from the southern state of Oaxaca, I had to upload a negative COVID test to the airline’s document […]
Don’t worry if you get confused reading accounts of the new Social Security Trustees Report. On one hand, you have some articles reporting that this document shows that Social Security will be insolvent in less than 15 years. Others prompt you to pop champagne corks in celebration of Social Security’s financial footing being so strong […]
The president now brags that he cut the deficit! “We’re on track,” he says, to have “the biggest decline in a single year ever in American history.” It’s actually true. But utterly deceitful. President Joe Biden’s deficit will be down from last year, but that’s only because he spent such gargantuan amounts then. For once, […]
By this spring, nearly all the eviction moratoriums imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic had ended, either because courts blocked them or because legislators repealed them or allowed them to expire. One conspicuous exception was Los Angeles, where tenants were still protected from eviction by the city’s ongoing state of emergency. L.A.’s moratorium, one of the […]
A friend of mine and his wife recently took a trip to Europe that almost ended in disaster because of positive COVID-19 tests. Fortunately, the results weren’t theirs; four other members of their tour group who stood in line at the same pharmacy to get swabbed received the unwelcome results and remained stranded at their […]